Their mother had been so timid, so self-effacing, that the presence of anyone else robbed her of herself. Diana and David had accomplished that long before Hugh, and then the little boys arrived. But Diana didn’t notice how much her mother was a house from which the occupant had fled until she was pregnant with Carl. She wore thick stockings to cover and ease developing varicose veins. In the last heavy months she walked with her left hand perpetually pressed against the small of her back. Diana didn’t think so much about the baby to come as the relief and release the birth would be for her mother, but, once Carl arrived, he owned their mother as no one else did. His cries could suck her out of the kitchen as mightily as his mouth could suck nourishment from her breasts. No one else could interfere with that, not even Hugh.

Diana developed no natural sympathy for Carl until he was two and had to turn over his reign to yet another baby. Unlike the others in the house, resigned to the process, he expressed his outrage freely against his mother, against the baby, and, if neither was available, he punched Diana or David. Carl threw the baby’s empty juice bottle at his father only once. Hugh took his diaper off to spank him, and even those betrayed cries didn’t bring his mother back to him. It was Diana who went to find him, hidden among the coats in the hall closet, who coaxed him out with a cookie and cleaned up his grief-smeared face.

But she never really thought of those two as her brothers. They were her mother’s children, conceived and born as offerings to Hugh, who responded to them with a delayed need for ownership which made Diana pity rather than love the children. It was pity in David, too, which taught him to be milder with them than he might have been expected to be. When they got into his old toys, he offered them up without complaint, and he let those little boys climb about him with no respect for his anatomy, a neutral territory into which their father rarely reached to demand new civilities and accomplishments. When Diana speculated about how Hugh might have been with a daughter, she didn’t think of her own experience as a measure.

Hugh dealt with Diana from the beginning as a potential sexual fact to be denied. He did not encourage displays of affection but practised a strict courtesy with her for the purpose of establishing mutual respect. Superficially, she gave it to him, for he never tried to reach into her life for control as he did into David’s. Every aspect of David’s behaviour was under scrutiny. The only moral authority Hugh wanted over Diana was sexual, and the easiest way for him to have that was to delegate it to David.